Opinion: Juba regime distributing violence as service to civil population

July 16, 2020 Opinions

By Chol Duang

Journalist Chol Duang (Photo credit: author)

July 16, 2020 (SSNN) – Even after the formation of the so-called R-TGONU, violence continues to flare up everywhere, including in areas known to enjoy peace and good neighborliness. Hate speech has heightened unprecedentedly, as hatemongers inundate online space with highly inflammatory comments and fear traders exchanging threats, widening schism further.

The self-appointed government in Juba has been surviving off violent environment, where they tell hapless population that public funds have been committed to improving security, building a road or bringing consumer commodities from other countries.

A security that never improves and goods that don’t arrive. Now, warlords and their sponsors are, conversely, distributing violence as they eye livestock resources in the communities. It should be inferred that oil resources appear to be in depletion or scarcely reaching all looters.

Here’s a government that’s determined to depopulate a country — purposefully — to remain in power beyond their progeny. First: it’s denied the citizens services for which it was brought to power; second: it’s uprooted and displaced half the population, rendering them refugees or IDPs; and third: it’s taken fighting — in fact gun violence — to civilian settlements, through militia or informal armies.

The remaining few civilians are again afflicted with raids and banditry, always involving deaths. You wonder what can be done to rescue the country from the precipice. South Sudan is on the edge precariously facing down an abyss.

Arms have proliferated uncontrollably, hindering every effort to contain violence anywhere in the country. I’m deeply pained by communal fighting and revenge deaths that have long characterized our lives. Few people cannot perch atop a government system to serve their interest while the country’s population wallows in starvation and violence.

The author is a South Sudanese TV journalist, political campaigner, literacy activist, traveler, and opinion writer. He’s also a Mandela Washington fellow, who worked before with a state broadcaster as news reporter and anchor.

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